THE WORD OF THE HEAD OF THE TRUE ORTHODOX CHURCH OF RUSSIA ON OCCASION OF THE 15-TH ANNIVERSARY OF ESTABLISHING COMMUNION BETWEEN THE TRUE ORTHODOX CHURCHES OF RUSSIA AND GREECE

The WORD

of HIS HOLINESS †SERAPHIM (MOTOVILOV),

METROPOLITAN of MOSCOW AND of ALL RUSSIA,

the HEAD of the TRUE ORTHODOX CHURCH of RUSSIA

the HEAD of the HOLY INTERNATIONAL SYNAXIS

of the TRUE ORTHODOX CHURCHES

on OCCASION of the 15th ANNIVERSARY

of ESTABLISHING COMMUNION BETWEEN

the TRUE ORTHODOX CHURCHES

OF RUSSIA AND GREECE

“That they all may be one; just as You, Father, are in Me,

and I am in You, that they also may be one in Us:

that the world may believe that You have sent Me”.

(John 17:21)

“The Church is not walls and roof, but faith and life”.

(St. John Chrysostom)

My beloved!

Today, on this shiny blessed day of the Feast of the holy Myrrh-bearing Women, when the whole world is still trembling with that ineffable joy which filled the hearts of the women chosen to become the first to witness the Resurrection of the Saviour, I am standing again upon the blessed land of Greece. Right here, in this holy monastery, which has become to me not merely a second home, but rather a true refuge of the soul, where each stone, each dome, each breath of the monks and nuns, and each beat of the hearts of the faithful bears are sealed with great love, wisdom, and humility before our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here, in this grace-filled corner, year after year, for up to many years now, I immerse myself in the ocean of living faith. The fire of sincere prayer, coming up to the Throne of the Most High God, burns here so brightly that it seems as though Heaven itself bends down to the earth. I immerse myself in the indescribable purity of tens of thousands of souls who, with one accord, glorify the Resurrected Christ, and my heart overflows with gratitude for the great gift of brotherly love, mutual understanding, and support. This is not just a human friendship — it is that divine love of which the Apostle spoke: “Love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:8). Like the myrrh, poured out upon the feet of the Saviour, it gives fragrance and heals, uniting us into the one Body of Christ.

Our joint path began fifteen years ago, when His Beatitude Metropolitan Angelos (Anastasiou), my true brother in Christ and a good friend, also a companion in prayer, visited our holy place in Russia, and our hearts, guided by the Holy Spirit, recognized one another. We both felt that the Lord Himself was saying to us: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis. 2:18). In loneliness, the path of true serving to Christ might become unbearably hard. But together, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters, we have found the way strewn with thorns, yet illumined by the light of the Resurrection. And then we started bringing to the peoples not just the words of the human, but rather the words of eternal life — those of the true faith, enlightening the mind, strengthening the spirit, making truth plain, and guiding souls upon the path of salvation. We bestowed upon people not earthly goods, but the light of Christ and that love which “suffers long, and is kind and doesn’t seek its own” (1 Cor. 13:4).

Our mutual decision was marked by signing of the Tomos of entire and undivided communication between the True Orthodox Churches of Russia and Greece, which became the first act of its kind in the hundred-year history of the True Orthodox Church.

The Lord did not forsake us. When, in 2021, He called to Himself our beloved brother and friend, His Beatitude Metropolitan Angelos, his prayers and intercession covered us like an invisible mantle. Our union not only did not weaken — it blossomed like a vine planted in good soil and watered by the grace of God. Today, the Holy Synaxis of the True Orthodox Churches is no longer two peoples, but a great family of sons and daughters coming from different lands and speaking numerous languages: Russia and Greece, the United States and the British Isles, Bukovina, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Latin America… And these are only those who I can name today. How many more souls, thirsting for truth, have joined themselves to us! How many hearts, wounded by the lies of this world, have found peace and hope here!

We started our way in difficult times. The world cried aloud about “freedom of conscience,” yet behind the scenes of this freedom there lurked an unseen pressure — the pressure of those who support the official, “state” church structures. We, however, chose another path: to stand apart from government, apart from political games, apart from secular ambitions. We were seeking for only that for which the Church of Christ was created — salvation of souls. We did not ask for favours of the mighty of this world, nor did we seek earthly goods. And therefore, it was impossible to buy us, to break us, or to compel us to keep silent. “It is hard to rule those who have no interest in earthly goods. It is impossible to crush those who have fixed their gaze upon the Kingdom of Heaven” — thus we said then, and thus we say it now.

The worldwide and terrible pandemic of 2019–2021, which claimed the lives of many of our brothers, limited our direct contact, yet could not diminish its fruitfulness. We continued to communicate online, by telephone and internet, by means of frequent video conferences. During the pandemic, services in our churches did not cease for a single moment, while the churches of the official bodies stood empty even on the Paschal night. We remained ever faithful to God, and we were able to endure that dreadful time. To endure, despite everything. To endure, thanks to the sincere prayerful support of all the churches that became our larger family — the family which I felt, and continue to feel, with every fiber of my soul whenever I stand before the Holy Table and, like all of you, offer up the prayer wrung from the heart, for all and for all things, for the peace of the whole world, for the good estate of the holy Churches of God, and for the union of all. And when I say to my concelebrants in the altar, “Christ is in our midst,” I mentally embrace all those who, in one way or another, have become the meaning of my life.

Another trial for all of us has been the wars and upheavals of the last decade, which have engulfed the globe.

I do not understand, and probably, I shall never understand, why people are unable to grasp one simple and obvious truth: how fragile our world is. And how small it is. Instead of loving and building, they hate and destroy. Instead of rejoicing in life, they applaud death. Instead of praying to God, they worship Mammon. And instead of following the call of conscience, they destroy churches.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which entered its acute phase in 2022, is not merely a confrontation between two states, whatever the underlying reasons may be. It is a confrontation between the East and the West, between the bulwark of Orthodoxy and open obscurantism. It is, on the one hand, goodness and forgiveness, and on the other hand, pure cynicism and cruelty. It is the light of truth and the triumph of darkness. It is the defense of traditional values and universal human morality, in which Russia has always been strong, and the outright trampling underfoot of all things, so clearly expressed in the nationalist ideology of Ukraine. And it makes me sad to see how the fierce shoots of modern Nazism are sprouting not only in the soul of a once-brotherly people, but also in various corners of our much-suffering world, corrupting unformed souls and leading entire nations onto the road to hell.

One day, I hope so much!, all this story will come to its end. And, getting back to themselves after their drunken frenzy, many of them will look with horror upon the work of their own hands and cry out in despair: “Lord! What have we done?” But will there still be time for repentance? I do not know. I am not sure. And our goal is to shield the souls of those who have entrusted themselves to us, our spiritual children of the True Orthodox Church, from such horror. We must continue steadfastly to keep the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ, to follow His path with clarity, and to save the souls of those who wander in darkness. We must become at once a lamp of the soul and a lamp of the mind, a fortress of faith and a bulwark of hope. We must. For there is no one else but us.

And yet, for now we are compelled with sorrow, to observe the universal decline of spirituality and to witness madness and outrages.

I shall give only a few examples that have struck me lately.

The ancient land of Armenia. The country that accepted Christ in the dawn of time. The land where the spiritual authority of Holy Echmiadzin seemed indestructible. And precisely there the state is undertaking repressions against the Catholicos of All Armenians, carrying out arrests among the clergy and the faithful of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and imprisoning bishops solely because they support and defend their Primate.

And now, — Ukraine, torn by contradictions. The country where Orthodoxy has been turned into a farce. The country where the state, in the person of a gangster clique, decides and orders which church is to exist and which is to disappear; where officials are unashamed to dictate to hierarchs and priests the exact way they must serve God and whom they are obliged to commemorate in prayer. The country where the innocent blood of the faithful is shed during forcible seizures of churches. The country where unwelcome servants of God are forcibly sent to the front and made to take up arms, while those who disagree are cast into prison on charges of treason. And over all this there stretches the shadow of Constantinople, blessing lawlessness and trampling upon the foundations.

The Baltic lands, where nuns are being driven from monasteries by the will of local rulers. Moldova, on whose territory the Romanian Patriarchate wages war against the Moscow Patriarchate. Africa, the ancestral land of the Church of Alexandria, where, contrary to the existing rules and canons, the Synod of the Russian Church establishes its own exarchate.

And at the background of all the mentioned, there are the unceasing high-profile scandals connected with high-ranking bishops of the world Orthodoxy.

Only the True Orthodox Church, like an island of peace and grace, stands above all this filth and worldly vanity, continuing to do what the true Church must do: the salvation of the souls of mankind. We truly remain the sole guardians of the ancient Christian traditions, and perhaps, it is we who may rightly be called the salt of the earth and the conscience of humanity.

Now in addition, the war has flared up in the Middle East. The excessive ambitions of Washington and Tel Aviv, guided by desire to dominate the oil fields of Iran, colliding with the fanaticism of the Islamic world, have led to enormous casualties and destruction. As a result, the great Christian shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, now stands under the threat. For Tehran, defending itself against military aggression, will respond in one way or another — and is already contracting — with retaliatory strikes against Israel.

You and I are witnessing what could, with great probability, be called the unmistakable signs of the Apocalypse. Perhaps, not everything is lost yet, but never mind how difficult it is to declare and whatever anyone may say, the Third World War has in fact already begun.

There is no use telling pretty lies. The terrible events tearing the globe apart are not merely the result of the actions of the deranged politicians maddened by impunity. They are the consequences of the hardening of human souls. They are the rampant triumph of cynicism and the fall of morality. They are godlessness and total unbelief. They are pride and the striving to overthrow the foundations. They are the very forces that once laid down Rome and Babylon, which had seemed to exist forever. Today history repeats itself in one of its worst forms. And disunity, destroying the Christian world like corrosion, only furthers this process.

For fifteen years we have been gathering, bit by bit, and uniting those who unfailingly follow the way of Christ, those who, having renounced the earthly, lift their gaze to the heavenly. We do not set ourselves against official Orthodoxy. Why should we? They themselves uncover and display to all the world their festering sores, rejecting both God and the people who seek the Light of Truth. Why struggle against that which destroys itself? Against the asp devouring its own tail? We have a different goal. We must simply show the peoples another way: the path of love and forgiveness, the path of creation and redemption, the path of mercy and detachment from worldly possessions, the path of sincere prayer and true ascetic striving.

The Holy Synaxis of the True Orthodox Churches is not the Vatican, which has made the Church an image of the statehood; it is not Constantinople, permeated with the heresy of caesaropapism; it is not the patriarchs of the local churches who, in their pride, deem themselves infallible and vie with one another in the grandeur of their own thrones. The Holy Synaxis is a true family. The family of peoples and churches, of bishops and laity, of priests and monastics. The family of those who have received Christ with all their heart and follow Him unswervingly.

Our primary goal is to preserve the traditions and to bring up the younger generation in the spirit of love for God and for the human being. And we shall never stop at what has already been achieved. We shall always go forward, with faith in our hearts and with the name of the Lord upon our lips. This is what we used to dream about with the now departed Metropolitan Angelos, and this is what those who come after us shall continue to struggle for. We shall continue. We shall raise the younger generation in the spirit of love for God and for the humanity. We shall never stop. Our family shall grow like the cedars of Lebanon, and all that we do shall resound with a pure ringing in the souls of those who seek the truth. One cannot deceive the tuning fork of the human soul. For from the very beginning it is tuned to that great harmony whose name is God.

Let us, therefore, be steadfast in our faith and be worthy of the ancient heritage of our holy forebears. May the All-Merciful Lord bless us in our labours and grant us strength to walk the chosen road with honour, with open gaze, and with the heads held high. May the great sacrifice of the Saviour become for us the guiding star, and may His promise, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20), as a reminder of His abiding presence, become the eternal consolation in our hearts.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.